Its in the 60s outside. On naked arms the sun is warm and bright. Great weather for spiritual eyes. What a creation God made for the man Adam! God gave Adam dominion over a rich diverse system of life and landscape. God created it and then and gave it to man. Why?
The immensity of creation is beyond man’s capacity to comprehend. He slowly unlocks God’s orderly work as time marches but does not see God’s light because man dwells in his own darkness. Life comes up out of the ground, flies over head, swims in the seas, critters so small you need a magnifying glass, invisible critters … on and on it goes. Men write new books, decades after decade about new discoveries, not only of life itself but things holding it all together. Prideful Man looks to himself rather than his Creator. Yet, our loving Father furnishes man with all he possesses and offers grace too!
This afternoon’s scene includes geese just arrived from the north as migration has begun. It is too faint to see, but there are at least 50 geese on the right resting on a patch of green close to a fresh water pond. Where I’m standing, to the left and right are big ancient trees. The leaves seem to be pulling on the limbs as strong winds bend the arms of the trees through the scene. You can’t see where the wind is coming from or where it is going. The leaves show where it is and often where it has been. Everything seen is a shadow of what is unseen. Visible creation is God’s finger pointing to His unseen kingdom. Eternal vision becomes visible when we are in Christ and have eyes of the heart to see what is not visible and understand things of the Spirit. May His righteousness be our fruit!
Adam lost the creation given to us by God. Sin removed the “good” creation out from the hands of Adam into the hands of Satan polluted. Satan rules this world today under the authority given to Adam. This will change when our Lord Jesus Christ comes back as King destroying Satan’s authority, establishing His righteous rule.
God’s righteous kingdom now reigns by power and grace in the hearts of those created new in Christ Jesus.
The trinity is visible today. The warmth of the Son on bare skin makes us conscious of His presence even while awe struck at the wholeness of creation, clouds revealing the Spirit’s movement. The orderly structure of life speaks of our Creator God who breathed life into us physically and birthed us a second time with the resurrected life of Jesus by the Holy Spirit, redeeming us into Himself. Everything earthly is a picture, an appointment of whom we can’t see clearly. We see dimly a glory of Him who is not visible.
God has created, 2Cor 5:17, within the heart of each redeemed believer, a new Spiritual creation in the likeness of Jesus Christ, Eph. 4:24. Jesus is the second Adam, Romans 5:21cf, 1Cor.15:20cf. Our covenant of life from the first Adam has been replaced with a new covenant with the second Adam, Jesus Christ.
Our new Spiritual creation is inside the container of dust coming from the first Adam. This is the dwelling place of the Spirit of God. It is restricted by faith but by grace we can grow knowledge and Spiritual fellowship with the Father God even while living in this container of dust. By consuming grace given to us, we are able to increase our grace capacity, maturing both our life and walk while on earth in flesh.
Like Adam, we too have a responsibility for what God has placed within our heart. True, it is a Spiritual creation but so much more than given to Adam (Romans 5 grace). It is not limited to what is seen but reaches into eternity dwarfing Adam’s dominion. Our new creation, within us, includes the resurrection power of Jesus and provides eternal treasures in heaven, but also grows our faith while we walk in sandals on earthy soil.
Our eternal treasures and rewards are linked to what we do with grace, God’s gifts to us. We are called to produce spiritual fruit, possible only in Christ. Spiritual fruit is described in two ways. One is our internal response to God’s truth so that our spirit becomes like His Spirit. An illustration of this internal response is illustrated in Galatians 5 as the fruit of the Spirit. This is becoming who we already are in Christ.
Fruit is also produced through our relationships with people. This involves integrity of the word in our heart, working by action and word to the outside world. In other words, we declare to others what God has declared in our own heart through what we say and don’t say, through what we do and don’t do. Our “I-Thou” relationship with God is linked through faith.
Our relationship with things are secondary to “I-Thou” relationships. If an “I-It” relationship replaces “I-Thou,” it becomes bad fruit.
In all cases we need purification of our temporal, worldly soul. God’s provision for cleansing is His purifying fire in our life, Mark 9:49. We will look at this in greater detail in our next Grace Notes. But here, we want to clearly establish the reality of who we already are in Christ even before putting to death the impurities resident within our soul after being birthed by God in righteousness.
Each individual redeemed person is a new righteous creation within themselves, within their body of sinful flesh. If fact, this is who we now are, a Spiritual creation in Christ, 2Cor. 5:17, Eph. 4:24 . Two things have happened. The imputed righteousness of Christ has been placed within our soul, Romans 4:22-24, 2Cor. 5:21. This covers all our impurities. But, in addition to this, our very nature is changed so we can be righteous from the essence of our new creation in Christ Jesus. Yet, even this requires faith, Phil. 3:9. Our new birth creation requires God’s resurrection power to produce Spiritual fruit and this only happens through faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God, Heb. 11:6. This is how we are able to weave the righteous robes we wear at our future wedding with the Lamb, Rev.19:7-8.
This is our eternal identity which begins right here and now because our spiritual reality began when birthed by God in Christ Jesus. Paul refers to this as our new self in Eph. 4:24. This is critical to grasp because it changes everything! When we see who we already are, we can begin channeling this reality into who we are intended to be by producing righteous fruit in our unrighteous circumstances.
This is why we read in Romans 8:1, There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. Unlike Adam, being created in Christ Jesus spiritually allows us to sanctify our temporal reason, our temporal emotion, our whole temporal self. We actually have the resurrection power of Jesus to put our old self to death by walking in our new life, not just living in our new life, Galatians 5:25. We are to put to death in our soul what Jesus has already nailed to His cross.
Man is created in the image of God and is also a trinity. He is spiritual plus he has a fleshly body and he has a soul. Paul uses this model in 1Thessalonians 5:23,
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will do it.”
Man’s soul is typically described as his capacity to reason, to love and to make choices by virtue of his will to act. This is where man defines his life values and his character portrayed by his behavior choices.
The authority or power of natural life is in the darkness we have been delivered from by redemption. Man’s instinctual desire and lust resides in his body of “flesh” influencing his soul, Romans 7:18. However, by being birthed by God spiritually, we are joined by the resurrection power of God’s Spirit, our spirit to God’s Holy Spirit, Col. 1:13. We are now, in Christ, a Spiritual person and given access directly to God through Jesus. Our identity is changed. We are now Spiritual/spiritual because we are not only in Christ but He is also in us, Col. 1:27. This is a created act by the “dunamis” (δυναμιs) power of God, eternal in its effect and grace. The results means there is no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus, Romans 8:1.
This is now our “position” in Christ and, yes, our Spiritual condition also. In this condition, we are called to do two things, 1. Sanctify ourselves, 1Thess. 4:3, and 2. Minister, 2Cor. 5:18-19. These two things are effective only in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. This process glorifies God because it is a continuation of His work, changing us into the image of His dear Son, our Lord, through glory steps, one after another, 2Corinthians 3:18. This is His Spiritual work allowed by exercise of our will in faith, Phil. 1:6.
Our Spirit is the third element of our human trinity and through it we are called to sanctify our body and soul, Romans 12:1cf. God is a Spirit, John 4:24, and our “born again” union with God is Spiritual, 1Corinthians 6:17. This is who we are in Christ, Spiritual.
Sanctifying our soul and body is both a joyful and a painful process. Jesus is glorified in us and we are glorified in Him. We are wholly sanctified in Him Spiritually, 1Cor. 6:11, but now, we in like manner sanctify our soul in His “dunamis” resurrection power so we that walk as He walked, 1John 2:6.
This sanctifying process teaches holiness. Holiness requires the testing of our faith. This testing process brings us into deeper fellowship with Christ as we continue to walk in the light as He is in the light having fellowship with Him as well as with each other in Him, 1John 1:7.
Jesus came to earth in the form of man, the Son of Man, and invites us to enter into Him from the soul of our humanity through faith. This is what it means to be “in Christ.” Being “born again” is being created new in Christ Jesus through a Spiritual birth by God Himself, John 1:13, 3:3.
A redeemed believer is a Spiritual/spiritual person, our spirit joined with the Holy Spirit, 1Cor. 6:17. God transferred us out of Satan’s authority of darkness and into Jesus’ Kingdom of light, Col. 1:13. Our redemption, when “born again,” sanctifies us Spiritually enabling us, in Him, to sanctify our soul with His resurrection power, Rom. 6:17-19.
Redemption means being released from the shackles of sin. It means being taken out of sin’s slave market so we are no longer controlled by its power and domination. We are actually purchased by the blood of Christ out from the market of sin. Redemption is freedom in Christ from the slavism of sin. We have been delivered out of darkness into righteousness, out from the flesh into the Spirit. This means we can begin putting our worldly culture out of our behavior and adopt an eternal view of life in place of a worldview . Our behavior begins to be righteous just as we are created righteous through redemption.
This Spiritual righteous creation becomes our home away from home. We are now a Spiritual person, it is whom we are intended to be. It is similar to Adam before sin judged him into spiritual death. God has transferred us out from a soul of darkness into the Spirit of truth making us whole, a completed person. We can now shine our spiritual light into our soul changing our disposition, our mind into the mind of Christ. Our source for both life and truth now directly comes from God Himself through His word and indwelling Holy Spirit.
We are now ambassadors of God’s righteousness, 2Cor. 5:20. This is now our essence, it is who we now are. We are heirs of Christ in the family of God, Romans 8:16-17. But our own soul, grounded in the ways of the world, requires our attention. It is redeemed but not made righteous as we are spiritually. We are now a spiritual person and called to put to death what is temporal in our soul. We are now given the opportunity to identify with Jesus’ death by putting sin to death in the body with the resurrection power of Jesus.
This is sanctification. We are called to put to death the sin residing within our soul. Since we are now Spiritual, we have the resurrection power of Christ to put to death what is worldly in our body and soul.
We can move from milk to spiritual maturity, from belief to into Life itself with a hope leading us on into one degree of glory to another.